Many popular apple varieties today did not exist a hundred years ago; and some popular varieties a hundred years ago are seldom seen today. Both now and then, there were lists of which apple varieties were best for different uses. Today lists often refer to apples for eating, and cooking or baking. A 1924 list refers to apples for cooking, dessert apples, and cider apples. Were dessert apples ones that were particularly good to eat raw?
Government agencies have produced cookbooks for more than a hundred years that promote the use of local foods. I recently came across a small apple cookbook published in 1924 by the Fruit Branch of the Canada Department of Agriculture. The introduction to the book says that “Canada produces the best flavoured, most highly coloured and longest keeping apples.” I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that statement, but I can say that the book has some good recipes – though I used possibly inferior (??) U.S. apples.
One recipe was for Apple and Coconut Pie. The pie was delightful. This recipe takes a classic pie, and adds a fun tropical twist to it.
Here’s the original recipe:
I used cinnamon rather than lemon. When I made this recipe, in addition to flavoring the apples with sugar and cinnamon, I stirred in a little flour to help ensure that the pie won’t be overly juicy.
The recipe author spelled “cocoanut” with an “a.” I think that this is considered an archaic spelling now, so when I updated the recipe, I spelled it without an “a.”
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
6 cups thinly sliced apples (cored and peeled)
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 cups coconut
1 10-inch deep dish pie shell
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put sugar, cinnamon, and flour in a small bowl; stir to combine. Add the sugar and cinnamon mixture into the sliced apples; gently stir until the apples are coated with the mixture. Set aside.
Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the coconut on the pie shell, then add the apple mixture. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees, and bake an additional 30 minutes or until the apples are soft. Sprinkle 1 cup of coconut on top of the hot pie. Return to the oven and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until the coconut is just barely beginning to brown. Remove from oven.
Today we have margarine and spreads that are substitutes for butter. A hundred years ago there was a spread (or oleomargarine – not sure why it wasn’t just called margarine back then) called Nucoa that was made using a mixture of coconut and milk. I did a search on the name, and it looks like it may be still available in some areas (though I don’t think that it contains milk anymore), but I never heard of it.
Bakers have been making spooky Halloween Cakes for at least a hundred years. The October, 1924 issue of American Cookery magazine had a recipe for Witches’ Cake. The recipe intrigued me. It called for making a chocolate layer cake, and decorating it by putting the two parts of the cake together with a red frosting, then icing it with chocolate frosting, and decorating with small red candies that are arranged to make an outline of a witch.
This was a fun recipe to make. The cake was a rich and fudgy cake with an almost brownie-like texture.
Here’s the original recipe:
The old recipe called for tinting some of the frosting red with cochineal. I wasn’t familiar with cochineal so I did an online search. According to an article in Smithsonian Magazine, cochineal is a crimson dye made from an insect.
An average trip to the grocery store can yield a cartful of colorful foods. Bright among the rainbow are the reds, lending hues to products such as raspberry jam, canned cherries, strawberry licorice and red velvet cake. Often, their source is a certain small insect.
Cochineal bugs — oval-shaped scale insects around 0.2 inches long — are harvested and turned into the natural dyes cochineal extract, carmine and the pure pigment carminic acid. They have been used to color food, textiles and cosmetics for centuries.
Smithsonian Magazine (March 29, 2022)
I had no idea where I could buy cochineal, so I used dark red food coloring to tint the icing for the filling.
I didn’t find any small red wintergreen candies at the store where I shop, so I bought small red “sugar pearls” in the cake and cookie decorating section.
Squares of unsweetened baking chocolate have gotten smaller over the last hundred years. Back then a square was an ounce in size; today a square of a popular baking chocolate is 1/2 ounce.
This recipe doesn’t call for any baking powder or baking soda. The beaten egg whites provided the leavening.
I used 2/3 cup of milk, and I substituted all-purpose flour for the pastry flour.
I found recipes for Plain Frosting and Chocolate Frosting in a hundred-year-old cookbook:
I quadrupled the Plain Frosting recipe so that I’d have enough frosting to ice the cake. I did not use any water when making the Chocolate Frosting. I just used milk to get it to the right consistency. I used less chocolate than called for in the old recipe, since a square of chocolate was 1-ounce a hundred-years ago and the squares are smaller today- but it still was very chocolatey.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Cake
4 eggs, separated
1 1/3 cups butter, softened
2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted (4 1/2-ounce squares)
3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups all purpose or pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup milk
small red candies (can use wintergreen candies or sugar pearls)
Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease two 9-inch round cake pans; line with waxed paper or parchment paper, then grease again and lightly flour.
Put egg whites into a mixing bowl, and beat until peaks form. Set aside.
Cream 1/3 cup butter, then add the remaining 1 cup butter and the melted chocolate; beat until smooth. Stir in egg yolks and sugar. Sift together flour, salt, and cinnamon, then stir into the chocolate mixture alternately with the milk; continue stirring until thoroughly combined. Fold in the beaten egg whites. Pour the 1/2 of the batter into each of the cake pans.
Bake the layers for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes. Remove from pans. Cool 1 hour or until completely cooled.
Make frosting (see below).
To assemble cake, trim cake layers if needed to make even, then put a layer on a plate. Spread with red frosting, and then put the other layer on top of it. Ice with the chocolate frosting, then decorate with red candies. I used a template of a witch as a guide when arranging the candies to make an outline of the witch.
Frosting
4 cups flour confectioners’ sugar
1/3 – 1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
red food coloring (I used “dark red” food coloring)
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate (4 1/2-ounce squares)
Combine confectioners’ sugar and 1/3 cup milk in a mixing bowl; beat until smooth. Add vanilla, and beat until combined. If the mixture to too thick add additional milk.
Red Filling: Put about 3/4 cup of the frosting into a small bowl. Add enough red food coloring to make the filling a bright red. Stir to combine.
Chocolate Frosting; Stir the melted chocolate into the remaining frosting.
Today it’s generally considered impolite to show up at a friend or relative’s home without texting first. And, I’m often uncertain about whether friends prefer me to make a home-cooked meal or for us to go out for dinner. I’ve always assumed that it was very different a hundred years ago, and that people just dropped by with no advance notice and that home-cooked meals were the norm when it came to entertaining, so I was surprised to learn that it was much more nuanced back then. Here are few excerpts from an articletitled “When We Entertain Our Friends” that was in a 1924 issue of American Cookery
In the old days, such a thing as taking our friends out to eat would have been considered inhospitable in the extreme. Our mothers and grandmothers considered that relatives and social acquaintances came for the joy of sharing the intimate association of the family life whether it was humble or elaborate.
The visitors often came unannounced, and for a stay of considerable length. It was nothing to have a “load” drive up just a meal time, and the well-stocked cellar and pantry always responded nobly to such emergency demands.
—
[The homemaker] reasons that, everything considered, it is easier and no more expensive to take her friends out to a hotel or restaurant, than to go through the nervous strain of trying to play the gracious hostess under more or fewer handicaps.
And so, this hotel, and that well-known eating place, and some noisy restaurant, where an orchestra discourses sweet (?) and very loud jazz music, all are enriched by our money. Quite as likely as not, the meal is followed by an evening of paid entertainment, and anything in the nature of a comforting exchange of confidences or inspiring discussions, or brilliant conversations is crowded out entirely.
—
We are just learning in how many ways we follow a cycle in our lives today. We do not go backward in doing this. We keep moving ahead. And one of the progressive signs of the times is the increasing interest in having our friends share with us as good as we have, right where we live.
American Cookery (October, 1924)
The article’s advice is a hundred-years old, but it reinforces what I intuitively knew – entertaining at home is special. It builds memories, supports the development of strong relationships, and is just plain fun.
Both a hundred years ago and now, cooks sometimes struggle to figure out how to use leftovers. I recently had some leftover fish and some leftover mashed potatoes, so when I saw a recipe for Scalloped Fish in a 1924 cookbook that called for both cooked fish and mashed potatoes it seemed serendipitous, and I knew that I needed to give it a try.
The recipe was a winner. The Scalloped Fish was delightful, and I felt like I was being very frugal by using left-overs.
Here’s the original recipe:
I did not cook the milk mixture for the entire 20 minutes called for in the recipe. It seemed like it might begin to scorch on the bottom of the pan if I cooked it that long. I just cooked it until it came to a boil and thickened.
I added 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper when I made this recipe.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
2 hard-boiled eggs
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon butter + additional butter for topping
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 cups cooked or canned fish, flaked (I used flounder.)
1/2 cup mashed potatoes
1 cup fine bread crumbs (I grated a slice of bread.)
Preheat oven to 400° F. Cut hard-boiled eggs in half. Mash the yolks with a fork. Press the whites through a sieve. (I used a Foley mill.) Set aside.
Put the cornstarch and 1/4 cup milk into a small bowl; stir until smooth. Put the milk mixture into a saucepan, then add the remaining 1 3/4 cups milk and stir together. Add 1 tablespoon butter. Bring to a boil using medium heat while stirring constantly. Reduce heat and gently simmer until the liquid thickens. Stir in the mashed egg yolks and egg whites that have been put through a sieve. Remove from the heat and add the flaked fish and the mashed potatoes; stir until combined. Put in a baking dish. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top and dot with small pieces of butter. Bake in oven until hot and bubbly (approximately 15-25 minutes).
I was surprised to see an advertisement in a hundred-year-old magazine for paper baking cups. Until I saw the ad, I never thought about it – but think that I would have guessed that they were a more recent invention.
